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Microsoft's Patent Pledge "Worse Than Useless"
munchola writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has declared that Microsoft's patent pledge to open source developers is 'worse than useless'. SFLC chief technology officer, Bradley Kuhn, has written to FOSS developers warning them that 'developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they were before'. According to Kuhn: 'The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built.'"
Business and hippies don't mix. It's like oil and water.
The point is, open source people _aren't_ hippies. They've been running successful businesses for years now. But microsoft wants them to be hippies, wants the world to believe them to be - and now, is trying to make them be, using software patent monopolies to shut down open source businesses. The message is "if you're a hippie hobbyist coder, we won't sue you. But dare to build a business, and we will". Remember, patent and copyright monopolies DESTROY free market capitalism. Microsoft, like most large software corporations, are absolutely terrified of a true free market in software.
"hippy and communist" are just wrong when applied to free software folk: "Raging gun-nut libertarian" is far more accurate. Microsoft are playing with fire.
The "Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers" is indeed rather useless, because it only covers creation and local use, and specifically excludes distribution.
The "Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Individual Contributors to openSUSE.org" is also not interesting, since it covers the transfer of code from an author to SUSE, and only that and nothing else.
The "Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Hobbyist Contributors" is referenced from the above one. This should be the one that is covering the community distribution part. But is missing on the Microsoft website: Either it doesn't exist at all and the reference is a mistake, or there is a reason why it was left out from the web.
Has anyone managed to find it? Why Bradley Kuhn doesn't mention it?
This is some amazing shit. No one has any idea what the ramifications, if ANY are going to be from this deal and everyone is so quick to run and lynch a company who has dedicated millions of lines of code to open source projects that they make zero dollars from. This is the same Novell who along with IBM took a stand AGAINST SCO and cost those bastards millions in legal fees. This is the same Novell who is activly sueing M$ for patent violations in the MSOffice product. Shane, how many lines of code have you contributed to any open source projects? What have you done for the community that can come close to comparing to even a little of what Novell has done for Linux in the last few years. Is it really so boring up there in New York that you have nothing better to do other than sit around and stew about some shit that none of us will probably ever even be affected by? All of you armchair lawyers need to STFU and wait until something bad actually happens to the community before you start trying to crucify a fairly benevolent company, relatively speaking, who dedicates themselves daily to the Linux community. WHEN/IF something like that does happen I will be more than happy to join in the ripping of Novell's spine from their body and showing it to them, but until then can we please move on?
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
"The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself;"
;)
Meaning the stuff they would never know about to sue for in the first place. Gee they won't sue you for stuff they don't know you did, how generous